It is essential that you at once go to hotel and continue
your identity there. Immediately answer by telegram any
important inquiry for you; immediately answer all letters.
Buy a typewriter of traveling design and do all
correspondence on that, saying that you are taking it up
for convenience. Your signature is on passport; herewith
also a portion of letter with your writing. So far as
known, you do not sign nicknames, except to your father to
whom you are “Thia.” Mail arriving for you, or to arrive
at hotel, together with possessions in room will inform
you of your affairs more fully. So far as now known you
have no intimate friends in Chicago; you are to start
Thursday evening for Hoboken where you report Saturday
morning to Mrs. Donald G. Gresham for work in the
devastated districts in France, where you will observe all
desired matters, particularly in regard to number,
dispositions, personnel, equipment and morale of arriving
American forces; reporting. If and when it proves
impractical to forward proper reports, you will make
report in person, via Switzerland; apply for passport to
Lucerne.
With this, the connected writing abruptly ended; there was no
signature and no notation except at the bottom of the sheet was an
asterisk referring to an asterisk before the first mention of
“mother.” This note supplied, “Mother’s maiden name, Julia
Trowbridge Gifford,” and also the street address in Decatur. Below
that was the significant addenda:
Cynthia Gail killed in Sunday night wreck; identification
now extremely improbable; but watch papers for news. No
suspicion yet at home or hotel; _but you must appear at
once and answer any inquiry_.
This last command, which was a repetition, was emphatically
underlined. The page of the letter in Cynthia Gail’s handwriting was
addressed to her mother and was largely a list of
clothing--chemises, waists, stockings, and other articles--which she
had bought in Chicago and charged to her father’s account at two
department stores. A paragraph confided to her mother her feeling of
insignificance at the little part she might play in the war, though
it had seemed so big before she started away:
Yet no one knows what lies before one; even I may be
given my great moment to grasp!
The letter was unfinished; Cynthia Gail evidently had been carrying
it with her to complete and mail later when she was killed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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